Many Mexican restaurants are proud of their names and would imprint that name on the tortillas they serve if they could. Unfortunately, there has never been a device which could imprint the name onto the surface of such flat bread products.
The imprinting of bakery products typically involves the utilization of a mold in which the bakery product batter dough is poured and cooked. The batter conforms to the mold during cooking and keeps its shape thereafter. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,358,452 to Garstang shows an circular design for a waffle iron allows designs to be made in a waffle. The waffle iron has a recessed patterned surface on the bottom and a top surface bearing a pattern or design to be cooked into the waffle. Both the top and the bottom plates are electrically heated. In operation, waffle batter is poured into the iron, the iron is then closed and activated. The waffle batter is formed and cooked at the same time and then removed from the iron.
A second example of the prior art is found in U.S. Pat. No. 2,791,960 to Pietropinto, which discloses a device for making cookies and edible articles such as waffles or wheat cakes. This device is formed by a heated upper plate and an adjustable lower plate. The upper plates bears the design to be imprinted on the waffle. The lower plate or "dough receiving pocket" is an adjustable cavity which allows the thickness of the waffle to be varied. Both the upper and lower plates are hinged together and electrically heated. In operation, waffle dough or cookie dough is placed between the plates, which are then closed, forming and cooking the batter or dough placed between the plates.
The present invention deals with pressing, imprinting and cooking tortilla dough, pizza dough or pita bread dough, all essentially flat bread products. Dough for such flat bread products has distinctively different characteristics from waffle batter or cookie dough. Cooking a flat bread product generally, requires two steps. The first step involves pressing a piece of dough into a flat disk on a set of heated plates. The second step requires that the flat disk of dough be placed on a grill to complete cooking on both sides. Additionally, during the cooking process, the bread dough rises, creating patterns in the surface of the bread product as well as air pockets and other irregularities. The rising of the dough during cooking makes a single step of pressing, imprinting and cooking impossible.
There are several examples of presses and baking machines for flat bread products in the prior art; however, none of these machines imprint a design on the bread products. The closest prior art was invented by the present applicant. The first was U.S. Pat. No. 4,508,025 disclosing a tortilla press and oven unit. This machine presses and forms tortillas and then delivers them to a plurality of roasting oven disks. The tortilla is initially pressed between a set of heated press plates, then it is transferred to a first oven disk to partially cook the tortilla. It is then transferred to a second and third disk, being flipped over in between, to complete cooking of the bread product. The device is complex, and does not have the ability to imprint the bread products as they are pressed and cooked. Additionally, the slide used to flip the bread product often causes the bread product to stick and jam the machine.
A second example is U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,813 to the applicant. In this invention an improved synchronized press and method for forming bakery products is disclosed. A single heated plate is pressed downward against a heated parallel rotating disk and synchronized to match the motion of the rotating disk. This movement presses a dough ball into a flat bread product which is then cooked on several rotating disks. No method of printing is disclosed. Also, the method disclosed to flip the tortilla and transfer it from one disk to another is the same as that used in other prior art patents, such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,508,025 and so it has the same sticking problems.
A need exists for a press which can imprint a design on a flat bread product using at least two separate steps, imprinting and cooking. Moreover, a need exists for an imprinting press in combination with rotating cooking disks to aid in the convenience and compactness of a cooking unit. Finally, a need exists for an improvement to the prior art to aid in the transfer of a tortilla from one rotating cooking disk to the next.